Cultivating Change

Over the summer months, the right combination of sunshine, rain and nutrients produces great grass. It's pretty simple, actually.

On the political and policy fronts, the same holds true. Only the right combination of people, messages and actions — working together — produce great results.

Right now, every one of us in the home care community must engage our potent green thumbs — to encourage and cultivate grassroots and grasstops networks alike to produce results on several pressing issues. Our priorities are:

• To protect beneficiaries and small providers by lining up co-sponsors for H.R. 3559, the Hobson-Tanner bill.

  This bill, introduced in late July by Reps. David Hobson, R-Ohio, and John Tanner, D-Tenn., would solve many of the problems with the restrictive contracting (“competitive bidding”) provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Among other things, the bill aims to protect small providers, require that quality standards are in place before the bidding program begins and exempt small rural areas from the program. We need to produce strong, broad bipartisan support in the House to create momentum for this bill, which would go a long way toward taking the sting out of the restrictive contracting scheduled to begin in 10 of the statistically largest metropolitan areas in 2007.

• To preserve access to home inhalation drug therapy by preventing dispensing fee cuts.

  The benchmark Muse & Assoc. study in 2004 found that the cost of providing inhalation drug therapy is more than $68 per monthly supply — yet CMS set the 2005 dispensing fee at only $57. The proposed 2006 physician fee schedule suggests that CMS is considering an additional cut to the fee. Concerned providers have been asking their members of Congress to urge CMS to increase the dispensing fee. The deadline for comment is the end of September.

• And always — to remind Congress continually about the value of home care.

Request a meeting with your U.S. representative or senator to tell the home care story. Your voice is powerful. Use it. Our message to trumpet again and again is that home care is overwhelmingly preferred by patients, is cost-effective and is clinically proven. Home care is a large part of the solution to the looming crises in both Medicare and Medicaid.